John OkadaRezensionen

Japanese-Americans were imprisoned in the desert following the bombing of Pearl Harbor. For no reason. When they were released, the males of draft age were told to sign up to fight in WWII. if you didn't feel especially patriotic after being locked up in a desert prison for 2 years, and declined, you were again locked up. 2 more years. Is it any wonder that the young men characterized in this book were full of hate and despair? John Okada died at 47, his book largely unread, and unacclaimed by other Japanese-Americans.

heartbreaking

This book was written in1956 and is considered to be the first Japanese American novel. This book is so powerful not just because it is considered an Asian American classic, but it allows the reader to understand the decision many Japanese American men had to make when it came time to serve in the American Armed Forces.

Really really good. His breathless internal monologue stuff really worked for me

Lots of heartbreaking stuff but some of the saddest to me revolved around the vision of a particular and very dated optimism about the American Project. I think the q of whether there's anything redeemable about the idea of American liberty is an important political one (cf Aziz Rana's stuff) and it was really affecting to see that playing out in the life of this brutally minoritized American subject

Just taught this to high school Juniors. I had to make myself like it a bit more than I otherwise would, but overall it is solid. It's more readable for the historical/social aspects than the literary ones, but worth the read nonetheless.

No-No Boy Summary. The novel opens as Ichiro, a no-no boy and second-generation Japanese American man, returns home to Seattle. World War II has just ended, and Ichiro is free for the first time in four years. He has spent two years in an internment camp, and the next two in prison, after he refused the draft.

The primary focus of the book was Ichiro who refused to fight for the United States against Japan. Not only have Americans shown racism against him since has return but also he has had many friends and family members show their disappoint him. I found that I could relate to the book because I am from another country and I have faced some racial tensions as well. Also I have face backlash from some decisions that I have made since I been in the U.S. since some of them don't fit my culture. The one thing that disappointed somewhat is that it feels as if there wasn't really a good.Also that this a realistic book because you get the sense that Ichiro some hero who defeats evil and obtain a girl as many books seem to do these days.The ending makes you feel as if Ichiro still hasn't found piece with himself. i would recommend this book to individuals who have a interest in World War 2 and also to people who are going through an identity as Ichiro is. There's parts that lag but overall it's a solid read for most people.

I'm not really sure what to say about No-No Boy. It's very tragic. Very true. Very well-written. It highlights an era of American history that is often, if not always, glossed over. I had no idea about Japanese-American issues before reading this book, and I must say that Ichiro's story told it very well.

The only thing I would say is that the ending felt very abrupt to me and I wanted a little bit more. Every time it felt like things were concluding, more would happen. And then more happened, and then it ended.

No-No Boy was searingly wrong for its time: in 1956 John Okada wrote a novel about a Japanese American man who went to prison instead of fighting for a country that had sent his family to an internment camp. It was a time when white readers weren't ready to read the truth, and when Japanese-Americans were trying to move on. This novel was just reprinted last year by U Washington Press, with a foreword by Ruth Ozeki--it's worth getting a copy of the new edition just to read her essay about Okada and about the immediate post-WWII realities of Japanese American life. As Ozeki writes in her foreword, Ichiro's "obsessive, tormented" voice subverts Japanese postwar "model-minority" stereotypes, showing a fractured community and one man's "threnody of guilt, rage, and blame as he tries to negotiate his reentry into a shattered world."

I was expecting something polemical and discovered something far more subtle. The characters are complicated in interesting ways. I expected Ichiro, the titular No No Boy, to be righteous, a conscientious objector, to have a strong and (from my vantage point of 2015) completely defensible reason for refusing to swear loyalty to the United States or to enlist in the US armed forces when at the same time his people were being shipped off to internment camps.

Not at all. The novel is simply told, but never simple. Instead, the protagonist, Ichiro, is full of shame and self-doubt about his decision to refuse to swear a loyalty oath to the U.S. He wishes he could change his mind and take back the last two years, not because he spent them in prison, but because now he doesn't know who he is any longer. He envies friends who have come home wounded from the war; he even envies the war dead, even though their sacrifices have not given their families any more acceptance, and have not shielded them from race hatred at home.

Along with Ichiro, Okada introduces a host of other characters who each reflect a reasonable response to the prejudice and hardships faced by Japanese Americans in the 50's. One of my many favorites is Ichiro's mother, an unabashed Japanese nationalist, a woman who thinks any news about Japanese defeat must be U.S. war propaganda, and who rejects even the letters from her own family members in Japan as false.

Okada's writing has a hard-boiled feel that reminded me of From Here to Eternity by James Jones, which was published just a few years prior to No No Boy. The themes of the novel anticipate the turmoil of the Viet Nam war to follow, when men of a certain age found themselves divided into those who fought, and those who fought the draft. The novel should be read more widely not only as literature but as a fictional testament to the era in which it was written.

I received this book for free through Goodreads First Reads.

I understand why this is considered a classic; I was moved by the emotions and struggles of not only the main character, Ichiro, but by all of the characters, and how each was affected by their decisions regarding WWII, and even their greater life decisions (for example, Mama's views on Japan and America and WWII). It is well written but not plot driven. While I enjoyed reading it when I picked it up, I never felt compelled to pick it back up again when I wasn't reading. Even still, I think this novel will stay with me for a long time. All of the books I've read about Japanese Americans during WWII all took place before or during the war, so it was interesting to read a new perspective: what happens after the war, when people return home? There were many wonderful insights in this book...about being an immigrant, about being an American, and what that means...about racism and hatred and people. These insights and his beautiful writing ultimately land the book as "I liked it" even though the plot didn't fully capture my attention.

Unfortunately, this was Okada's only published work before he committed suicide. It's one thing to be a draft-dodger, but for Japanese Americans who wanted to prove their loyalty after being interned it meant a rejection of both Japanese and American identities.½

No-No Boy by John Okada is a Japanese-American experience after WWII internment camps and prison. Excellent follow-up to 'Silver Like Dust: One Family's Story of America's Japanese Internment' by Kimi Cunningham Grant.

Okada is a rare example of a Japanese-American published writer from the 1950s. A questionnaire was given to Japanese in camps which included 2 questions regarding the draft and renouncing Japanese allegiance (even though American citizenship was not an option). Young men who answered those questions "no," were called No-No Boys and taken to higher security and imprisonment. Okada writes of one No-No Boys angst-filled re-entry into Japanese and American community. I understood this book more because I read 'Silver Like Dust' first. Both were excellent.

The late Okada addressed perceptions from his view as an immigrant Asian confronting the narrow western view of "oriental" people. Not received much attention when published, it now offers a needed historical perspective.

John Okada's gritty, raw account of a Japanese's identity struggle upon returning to American culture after being imprisoned due to refusing to fight in WWII is a fresh detour from the typical Asian American canon.½

This is the single published book of the author, who is a second generation Japanese-American. The book was first published in 1957 and then rediscover a few decades later after the author’s death. The story is covering more or less one week of a person’s life. He just got out of prison where he spent two years for refusing to signing up joining the US army during World War II. Before that he spent two years in the internation camp. His return to his home town, Seattle, is marked with soul searching, pain and death. Throughout the book the anti-hero tries to figure out why he said no, and what doe sit mean for his future. His mother escaped to cognitive dissonance and doesn’t accept/believe that her beloved Japan lost the war. When her son forced her to face the inevitable she dies. So does his friend who did join the army but lost his leg and during this crucial week he dies of an operation. There are other equally tragic characters (his younger bother who enlists to the army the day he turns 18, an abandoned wife, a painter who paints truck signs in an institute, the tough boy who provokes his own death…) all of them contributing to the protagonist’s doubts. He has no home, his past and future was taken away from him, his identity questioned. Strong and eye-opening book on the Japanese American’s situation after the war. It is not an autobiographical boo, the author did serve in the army.

This is a depressing look into the lives of Japanese immigrants during WWII. Conflicting issues of loyalty and racism are all too prevalent in this novel. Somehow, the courage to live on is found.

OK, somewhat harrowing novel of a Jap.-Amer. youth who made a bad decision and must live with it.

When Pearl Harbor was bombed in 1941, Japanese immigrants and Americans of Japanese descent found themselves the target of the kind of denunciation that rabid, overzealous patriotism produces. Japanese-Americans were rounded up, screened, and eventually sent to “relocation camps.” The army drafted soldiers from these camps; some went willingly, but others abstained. These no-no boys were sent to federal prison. Ichiro, the novel’s protagonist, is one of these boys.

Ichiro is filled with self-loathing when he is released from prison and finds this loathing reflected at him when he encounters old friends and acquaintances. He is viewed by many as a traitor to his country; this party includes his own brother, Taro, who enlists in the army when he turns eighteen to compensate for his brother’s weakness. Conversely, there are people like his mother, who admire Ichiro’s loyalty to Japan. Ichiro’s father has become a hapless, drunken weakling in his absence, unable to defend his sons from their mother’s mania.

No-No Boy was a laborious read, despite the richness of its subject matter. The narrative suffers because of Ichiro’s angry and preachy internal monologues. There are several of these poorly constructed passages in the novel and they do nothing except expose the author’s amateur, manipulative attempts to evoke the reader’s sympathy. It is, moreover, difficult to identify with a protagonist as relentlessly hopeless and mopey as Ichiro. like Ichiro, the novel’s other characters are one-note caricatures given to self-righteous, moralizing speeches. The author tries very hard to involve the reader, but his effort to do so is obvious and, well, boring.

Despite these flaws, No-No Boy is widely regarded as the first important Asian-American novel. Such a distinction is a burden for any writer or novel to carry, and it’s something that a minor work like No-No Boy does not deserve. The themes it addresses remain sadly relevant in our times, given ’s questionable leadership and dubious foreign policy, but its social relevance far outweighs its actual literary merit.

Originally posted on my Vox and my LJ.

Four and a half stars.